Lisa Edmonds

While I recognized a lot of strong parallels to female lead urban fantasy hits like Kate Daniels or Mercy Tomson it was on a level I felt acceptable.
It's an incredibly standard plot that is somewhat spoiled by the blurb from the getgo.
Strong stolen magical artifact, could destroy the city, yadda yadda.
But if you are not after the invention of the wheel I initially thought this might be entertaining nonetheless.
But it wasn't to be.
We begin with instalove, bad enough but 95% of the genre suffers from it anyway so whatever,
At first, the story was mostly fine but, pretty far into the book, suddenly everything descended into a torrent of bullshit.
Then the main character is made out to be this incredibly badass chick with an incredibly fucked up and hard past that left her with trust issues.
(And I am not saying this lightly. It's even fucked up compared to the average fucked up past of main characters.)
But she apparently becomes absurdly gullible and stupid to nauseating levels as a cheap and lazy plot device for drama to commence. This came so much out of left field that I was completely baffled. And it's not one thing I am mad about. It's a continuous stream of shit, each sentence worse than the last on a plethora of levels.

Here is a spoilery explanation of what exactly went wrong.

The cunning vamp with his own incredibly obvious agenda to insinuate himself into her life that we have been told was neither trustworthy nor close to Alice in any way, the guy that she wasn't even willing to trust with the safety of a random client, tells her something out of the blue which is clearly completely in his own interest, something Sean (her love interest) vehemently denies. It's a morsel of information the vamp normally would never have willingly given up without getting something in exchange.
But she just blindly believes Charles (the shady vamp) over the guy she likes and trusts enough to give access to her personal library (which is a big deal), to give up control, open her shields, and whatnot.
Then she isn't even willing to listen to Sean's defense of himself despite him explaining to her that he has a way to undeniably prove that he didn't orchestrate any of what he is accused of.
Then Charles follows Sean to her place and provokes a fight claiming obviously false necessity of protection. The vamp that never gave anything for free before. That includes selflessly jumping into a "fight" that is not his own.
Then the situation gives this vamp access to her blood as well as a look at her body/scars. The blood and body she was willing to die over rather than expose (because of magical reasons related to her bad past she escaped from). She does nothing about it. She just gives both up for a bit of first aid which she didn't even really need to that vamp.

This was such a sudden and incredible streak of bullshit and it just wouldn't end, I don't even care anymore.
Hard dnf right there.
It might be that all this temporary insanity isn't even going to be relevant to the plot. Maybe it turns out the vamp is totally a good guy that just encourages a facade to protect himself or whatever. Or maybe he didn't actually get hold of anything incriminating despite the circumstances. I don't know. I don't care.
I liked where this was going initially and it worked for me.
I was interested in the characters and invested in the MC.
But there is a limit to the willing suspension of disbelief especially about the personalities of people.
Fuzzy magic is fine in soft magic systems. It's magic after all. A bit of suspension of disbelief is necessary anyway. But not the protagonist's personality.
This is an insult to the reader's intelligence if anything.
Sad.… (altro)

I loved this book! It caught me from the first page and just kept going. This book ties in with the Alice Worth series, and it tells you that at the beginning of the book. I wish I had read the Alice Worth series first, because I would understood world the book is set in better, as characters and events from the prior series are referenced in this one, and I like to read series in order. However, that being said, the book stood well on its own. I loved the characters, and I cared about what happened to them. I hope there are more books with these characters going forward. I’d like to read more about their story. I am also going to go back and read the Alice Worth series of books, and then re-read this one. It was a quick read, and I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.… (altro)

This book is a lot to take in if you have not read the Alice Worth series (which I did not but wish I had). Previous books allow you to meet characters and learn the world building that are essential to this book. Reading this as a standalone I was intrigued by the plot line and suspense, but feel I missed out as far as character relationships and growth. Arkady and Ronan were stubborn and arrogant, always one upping each other. I suppose this helped amplify the steam level, but also came across as annoying and immature. There was more on the side of arguing instead of banter. Although the story plot was intriguing it starts out very slow. However, I was entertained and plan to go back and read the origin of Alice Worth to get some perspective on these characters. I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving a free copy.… (altro)

Mortal Heart by Lisa Edmonds.
Exiled former archangel Ronan and Arkady Woodall, private investigator and business partner of Alice Worth, team up to track down the supernatural beings behind a human trafficking ring. Arkady and Ronan are both suitably kick-ass, and they're a good team. I liked how they snarked at each other. There was insta-lust, almost insta-love, misunderstandings in the way of both, and graphic sex. I'd say it's not absolutely necessary to have read the main Alice Worth series before this, but it definitely helps. Reviewed from an eBook copy received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program in return for an unbiased review.… (altro)